


Cold Case, Hot Prospect

by buckles



Series: Crew Skills [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28319457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckles/pseuds/buckles
Summary: The centuries old wreckage of the Splendor - a missing Mirialan luxury cruiser - has been located in the lava fields of Promencious Four. Tell your companion to bring back anything useful that might have survived the crash.
Series: Crew Skills [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1537546
Kudos: 2





	Cold Case, Hot Prospect

**Author's Note:**

> What happens if you take the SWTOR crew skill missions as writing prompts?

A small Alliance shuttle lances through the cloudy skies, drawing a streak in the sky above a desolate landscape of dark basalt. Rising like a gnomon over an enormous sundial lies the wreck of the Splendor, its enormous fusion engines now quiet and caked with volcanic dust. The shuttle comes to ground in the long shadow cast by a setting sun, igniting the sky an orange that mirrors a thin river of fresh lava in the distance.

Kaliyo steps off the exit ramp. 

"What the fuck ..." she says to herself, looking up at the massive hulk.

She casts her eyes about the wreck, looking for an ingress point. The daylight begins to draw away to the horizon as the sun dips below the horizon. And as she thinks she needs to return to the shuttle for a torch, she glimpses a line, askew from the cant of the ship. 

A rope, from some previous scavengers. 

"Fuck." she says again involuntarily, realizing, and makes for the rope.

• 

The lighting systems are still working inside the ship, illuminating tarnished brass strips along the wall and painted blue walls with gold filigree inlay. Pretty, but nothing that Kaliyo can take with her. She steadies herself along the wall as the floor plunges downwards, looking for something worthwhile that she can put in her pockets. 

Room after room of spacious living compartments, with double beds -- all ransacked, drawers emptied. Her fingers itch with a mix of anticipation, anxiety, and boredom. _There has to be something here_ , she thinks. 

_Or I'm going to kill somebody. Anybody._

The cruiser's mess hall lives up to its name: dinner tables, plates, napkins, arrangements, piled up at the other end of the room, flung to the wall in the crash. Or strewn about by the previous scavengers. Kaliyo clings to the door, thinking for a moment. 

She squats a little, keeping her center of balance low, and shuffles through the room, and emerges out into another hallway, plunging off into the distance and a junction nearby. 

_Nah, screw this._ Kaliyo thinks. _I'm just going to say that I didn't find shit._ She turns at the junction; at least this way the floor isn't getting any steeper. _Now how do I get out of this hunk of junk?_

A maintenance panel, clambering down a deck by a grimy ladder, more empty, ransacked berths. Then she sights an "Emergency Exit" sign, with a neat red arrow marked. 

_That'll work._

• 

The array of escape pods is empty -- save one. Kaliyo wrenches the latch open --

the corpse of a Gamorrean falls out, still clutching a long necklace -- presumably wrenched off some other body elsewhere on the ship, no doubt. She pries the rigored fingers open. "Hey, score." she says.

Maybe this isn't a complete wash after all.

She sits in the now single, empty chair in the escape pod, and buckles the seatbelt. Before she triggers the pod ejection mechanism, a thought flashes in her head. _So, why did he die, exactly?_

Kaliyo takes a moment to think, her hand hovering above the console inside the pod.

 _Fuck it._ She enters the autoeject sequence, landing point, and slams the execute button before she can think of it too hard, and the pod locks, seals, thrusters engage and the pod arcs out of the ship and drops quietly in the night sky on the lava plains.

The explosive bolts of the escape pod hatch fire, and Kaliyo starts the short trek out of the pod, across the fields, and back to the shuttle.

"Odessen Command to Kaliyo Djannis, do you read?" Lana's crisp accent crackles over the comms. "Any luck on the mission?" she asks. 

"Made out all right," Kaliyo says, lifting the necklace up to take a closer look in the dim moonlight.


End file.
